“At this point they’d barely have time to mine anything before they’d have to move out,” he said. “So much for my big idea.” Joe started with the running lights and the low-level dash illumination.
Once their eyes adjusted to the presence of the minor lights, Joe flicked on the main exterior lights, and the area right around them lit up in the familiar yellow-green.
“Nothing’s changed,” Kurt said, half expecting the tower of magnetic rock to have disappeared out from under their noses. It still loomed in the distance like a monolith.
Kurt looked to the right, gazing at the dark shadow of the Liberty ship they’d sidled up to. A gaping wound below the waterline seemed to have been the fatal blow to this particular vessel. For a second he wondered if it had gone down in World War II like the ships he’d seen in Truk. Couldn’t have been that old, there was only a modicum of sea growth on the ship. No more than a couple years’ worth, if that.
He looked the other way out across the seafloor to where the next-closest wrecks lay. The first was a small plane, or at least what had once been a twin-engine Cessna. He remembered what Katarina had said about the triple-tailed Constellation being made of aluminum, a nonferrous metal that would not be affected by magnetism. It lay out on the very fringe of the area, but the remnants of this plane were in close. Why? he thought.
He looked at another of the sunken vessels that lay beyond the wrecked aircraft. It was a trawler, maybe 90 feet in length. Standard multinet fishing boat. He couldn’t see it clearly from where they were, but he remembered gliding over it at one point in the initial survey. And, now that he thought about it, that trawler also wore little in the way of growth, even less than the Liberty vessel they’d parked next to.
He wondered if the magnetism was affecting the rate of growth. Some ships of the day used low-level electric charges to inhibit algae growth on their hulls. Maybe this was a similar effect.
He turned back to the ship that loomed beside them, his eyes focusing on the gaping wound in its side. And then it hit him.
“I’m an idiot,” Kurt said suddenly. “I’m an absolute idiot.” “What are you talking about?” Joe asked.
“How could we be so stupid?” Kurt mumbled, still lost in his own thoughts.
“Well, we’ve had a lot of practice,” Joe said.
“You know what else we’ve had a lot of practice doing?” Kurt said. “Hauling ships up from the depths. And also sending them to the bottom.” He turned, trying to look back at Joe. “How many ships have you scuttled as part of the reef-building program?” “At least fifty,” Joe said, “if you count all of the past ten years.” “I’ve been there half the time,” Kurt said. “And how do we sink them?” “We set charges below the waterline,” Joe said. “Blow holes in them. How else?” “Look at the damage on this ship,” he said.
The Barracuda already had its main lights on, but Joe activated a secondary light that was directional. He aimed it at the hole in the Liberty ship’s side. It left no doubt.
“The steel plates are blown outward,” Joe said.
“Someone scuttled this ship,” Kurt said.
“It could have been an internal explosion,” Joe said. “You never know what she was carrying. Besides, that’s a much bigger hole than any of us would have made.” “That’s because you want the ship to settle slowly and securely, landing bottom down so it can form a nice reef. But if you were trying to sink something quickly and not have anyone see it, this might be the way.” Kurt powered up the impeller, and the Barracuda lifted off the seafloor. He guided them across the mouth of this Devil’s Gate toward the trawler. There they found the same type of damage. A large outward blast had sunk the ship. A third freighter was the same.
“None of these ships have more than a year’s sea growth on them,” Kurt said. “The only thing that did was that Constellation out there. This place hasn’t been collecting ships for ages. These all went down at the same time.” “How could we not have seen this?” Joe asked.
“We were too busy with the scientists,” Kurt said. “Everyone was obsessing over that tower of rock, and, aside from Katarina, no one did more than a cursory examination of these ships.” As they settled in front of the gaping wound in the third ship, Kurt racked his tired brain to put it together. “This whole thing is a hoax.” “Sure seems that way,” Joe added. “But why? What’s the point? Who could even pull such a thing off?” Kurt guessed they both knew the answer to that last question but not the reasons behind it.
He went over the events in his mind again, desperately looking for a connection. He felt something ominous approaching, like a storm he couldn’t outrun. There seemed little of value anyone could get out of such a hoax.
If the same people who’d attacked the Kinjara Maru were in on this, how did it help them? It didn’t get them any materials. It couldn’t really bring them any more money. In fact, it had to have cost a small fortune to set up the hoax to begin with.
“Some terrorist groups are big on publicity,” he said.
“There are more effective ways to get it than this,” Joe said.
He was right. So far, aside from a few low-level reporters, Kurt hadn’t seen any great flood of interest.
In fact, after the initial announcement, few in the outside world seemed to care what they’d found. The only people who’d shown up in droves and stuck around were the experts in magnetism and superconduction.
Kurt gasped as he realized the truth. “The scientists,” he said. “That’s what they’re after.” It took the briefest instant for Joe to agree.
Apparently, the group that needed more of everything had included know-how on their shopping list. If Kurt was right, they’d baited a trap to bring experts from all over the world here. He only hoped they hadn’t snapped it shut yet.
Kurt grabbed the controls and gunned the throttle. As soon as they were moving again, he angled the nose of the Barracuda upward, and they began accelerating and climbing toward the gray light filtering in from above. They had to get to the surface and send a message to the Argo.
The science teams needed to be warned.
33
SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER, shortly after Kurt and Joe had first settled in on the seafloor beside the Liberty ship, Katarina Luskaya was packing her suitcase under the watchful eye of Major Sergei Komarov.